Stop the Senate's Supplemental Spending Spree

Stop the Senate's Supplemental Spending Spree

Congress has jacked up federal spending by 45 percent in just
five years. Agriculture, education, Medicare, energy and highway
bills have all registered scandalously high hikes.

Apparently, it's not enough. Congress is on the verge of adding
another chapter to its shameful record of fiscal imprudence.

The vehicle this time is the supplemental spending bill needed to
finance operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Gulf Coast
hurricane recovery. The House passed a $92 billion measure
requested by President Bush. But the Senate Appropriations
Committee hijacked that measure and loaded it up with $14 billion
in new spending, most of it unrelated to security or recovery
issues, while shortchanging funds requested for the war.
Where is the $14 billion going?

For starters, the bill would give Mississippi $700 million to
re-route a rail line a few miles northward. Why? The Senate report
claims it's to fix damage from Hurricane Katrina. But the line has
already been repaired, at a cost of $300 million, and the trains
are running just fine.

The real reason to shift the tracks is purportedly to make way for
construction of a "centralized gaming district" of private,
Vegas-style casinos. Even though a state commission recently
declared that this long-standing proposal "is no longer seen as
practical," Mississippi Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran have
taken advantage of taxpayers' post-Katrina generosity to lard on
$700 million for this "railroad to nowhere."

There's plenty more.

Consider farm subsidies. Congress has tripled them over the past
decade. Net farm income last year was the second highest ever.
Still not enough for the senators. The committee tacked on $4
billion in farm subsidies, much of it not even targeted to the Gulf
Coast. This will push total farm subsidies over $30 billion this
year.

While the ink has barely dried on the mammoth $286 billion highway
bill, Senators added $594 million in additional highway spending
completely unrelated to Katrina relief. In fact, the only project
specifically mentioned -- the Kuhio Highway in Kauai, Hawaii -- is
safely located 4,085 miles from Katrina's destructive path. If the
$286 billion authorized for highways is not enough for the Senate's
taste, perhaps they can reprogram some of the 6,371 pork projects
currently tying up $25 billion in highway spending.

It could get worse. Spending-crazed senators are poised to tack on
another $10 billion when the bloated committee bill comes to the
floor.

Budgets are supposed to be about setting priorities and making
trade-offs. Senate spenders have brazenly chosen parochial special
interests over national security. Rather than fully fund our troops
in Iraq and Afghanistan, they prefer to turn guns into pork.

This is no time for a senatorial spending spree. Federal spending
already stands at a post-war high of $23,760 per household. The new
Medicare prescription drug benefit is projected to cost more than
$1 trillion over the next 10 years, and the first baby boomers are
less than two years from collecting their first Medicare and Social
Security benefits.

The unfunded obligations from these programs and other federal
liabilities already total $375,000 for every full-time worker in
America. Within a decade, merely balancing the budget will require
a tax increase of $7,000 per household, unless Congress starts
making tough choices soon.

The Senate's actions show an arrogant disregard for the huge fiscal
burden they have already placed on American taxpayers and their
children. Larding up a wartime emergency bill with pork projects,
farm bailouts, and even a $700 million "railroad to nowhere" is an
indefensible abdication of the Senate's responsibility.

Perhaps, when senators return to Washington from spring break, they
will also return to the responsible supplemental spending bill
passed by the House. But, given the hubris and greed exemplified in
the Senate committee's bill, that's doesn't seem a very good
bet.

That would leave taxpayers with only one line of defense: the
presidential veto. President Bush has not yet seen fit to use that
power.

The president would do well to draw a spending "line-in-the sand"
now, before the Senate returns to its deliberations. His should be
an ironclad promise to veto any supplemental larded up with
extraneous spending. If Congress fails to end the madness itself,
the president must step in.